COME on everybody, lift your chins up off the floor and recognise that there are always reasons to count your blessings and look on the bright side of life.

Let’s be honest and accept that Sunday’s surrender to Germany has done millions of supporters a great favour, because there’s nothing we love more than to wallow in defeat and indulge ourselves in lengthy inquests, post-mortems and inquiries into WHAT WENT WRONG.

This is what we’ve been used to for decades and this is what – deep down, beneath all the bravado and the many, misguided layers of “This is our time!” optimism – we are truly world-class at . . . getting a kind of perverse satisfaction out of living the nightmare, as opposed to living the dream. Or the pretence.

The plight of England fans is summed up by a quote from John Cleese’s character Brian Stimpson in the 1986 film Clockwise, when he says: “I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can't stand.”

With England, everything – the misplaced confidence of the players, coaching staff, former players, pundits and the hype and hysteria whipped up by the frenzied tabloid Press – is geared to the idea of success.

This, in turn, gives millions hope. The reality, though, is invariably different. The reality is despair – but a despair which we’ve grown used to and now know how to handle.

So Fabio Capello and the boys have done us all a favour, by bringing all this forward – with two weeks of the World Cup to go.

Essentially, the hapless and hopeless boys in red have put us out of our misery nice and early – and now, as well as the tennis, the cricket and the sunshine (if, that is, you like that sort of thing), you can enjoy the remaining World Cup matches without any of the stress associated with England’s calamitous campaign.

For example, Saturday’s game between Germany and Argentina – two fine footballing sides – looks like a classic in the making. And we’ll be able to sit back with a beer or two and enjoy the spectacle (as a neutral observer, I usually hope for a high-scoring game with plenty of talking points and controversy, all rounded off with a penalty shoot-out), without all that energy-sapping emotion, fear and tension getting in the way.

And be honest – why the hell should we deny ourselves a bit of pleasure and happiness, just because the national team has gone and done what it does so well (let down the country)?

We have already seen that the best thing to do is to move on – with the shining examples showing us the way forward having been a couple of England’s finest: Ashley Cole and Ledley King, who were caught by the Sky News cameras laughing their chests off as the squad landed back in Rustenburg on Sunday night.

As I watched those pictures yesterday morning – Cole was laughing so hysterically, I really did think he might pull something – I noticed a slight contrast with the nature of the quotes from England captain Steven Gerrard rolling along the screen below.

Their joy and laughter was also at odds with the post-match interviews carried out with some England fans – the ones that weren’t raging against “over-paid and overrated” players were almost choking on their own tears (although that may have been because the sad knights had just realised how daft they looked roaming the streets of Bloemfontein wearing chain-mail).

Perhaps they should have listened to Garth Crooks (what am I saying? No one should listen to Garth Crooks!) who, over on the BBC yesterday, was going on about how no “sensible” pundit thought England would actually win the World Cup (so all that guff about “the golden generation” was just, er, guff, was it? Those damned, not-at-all-sensible pundits had many fans fooled).

But thanks, Garth, for putting people straight.

It’s always interesting listening to ex-players get hot under the collar about England’s latest ineptitude, so this was another reason to pluck some perverse pleasure out of Sunday’s humiliating defeat.

The normally dull and dreary Alan Shearer was refreshingly animated and outspoken (rejoice, he HAS got some opinions!), but gave the impression that this sort of thing didn’t normally happen with England.

But while the scale of the defeat was, admittedly, a shocker, how many other times in the last 20 years – including some occasions when Shearer has been on the pitch – have pundits had cause to lambast a not-very-good national side?

All you have to do is rewind a little, Alan – then you’ll realise that while football used to be the national game, for years now the national game has been slagging off the national team for being unable to play what was once the national game.

Our early exit provides other reasons to be cheerful – we can, for example, laugh as loudly as Ashley Cole at those silly sausages who call radio phone-ins and ask daft questions like: “How can the England team be so bad when the Premier League is the best in the world?”

Possibly because the Premier League has so many foreign players.

And no longer will we have to hear Manchester city councillors ridiculously describing fans who attended the big screen viewings at Castlefield as being a credit to their city and country . . . because they were somehow capable of watching a match for 90 minutes without rioting. Why didn’t you go further and give them all medals?

There will, sadly, be no medals for the players – unlike in 1966, when it was England who famously benefited from a highly-dubious linesman’s decision. There was much less debate about whether Frank Lampard’s shot had crossed the line, but at least all those England fans who have always believed that the crucial third goal in that 4-2 World Cup final victory shouldn’t have been allowed will feel a little less guilty now that things have been evened up. Sort of.

After humbling defeats like Sunday’s, there is one main thing people crave: change . . . whether that be a change of coach, players, tactical approach or all three.

But perhaps, just perhaps, there will be one specific and long-overdue change which will take place in the aftermath of that horror show – and one that will make everyone happy . . .